Right defends Raddatz against Daily Caller

10/10/12 4:27 PM EDT

Prominent conservative commentators on Wednesday largely dismissed a story that suggested ABC News’ Martha Raddatz will be a biased moderator of Thursday’s vice presidential debate because President Barack Obama attended her wedding two decades ago.

Conservative outlet The Daily Caller accused the network of trying to “downplay” that Obama attended Raddatz’s 1991 wedding to Julius Genachowski, whom the president later named to head the Federal Communications Commission (and to whom Raddatz is no longer married). The story, which led Drudge Report on Wednesday afternoon, noted that Obama and Genachowski worked together on the Harvard Law Review.

ABC News dismissed the implication of bias as “absurd” and the Commission on Presidential Debates has “not given a moment’s thought” to the situation. Many conservatives — though not all — seem to agree.

Carol Platt Liebau, who writes at Townhall.com and worked at the Harvard Law Review with Obama and Genachowski, was quoted in the Daily Caller story talking about Raddatz’s relationship with Genachowski — she recalled that it was “quite public,” and has written that she would be “shocked if she hadn’t met Obama at some point.”

But she issued a follow-up post after the story ran, saying she didn’t think the wedding revelation would “prevent” Raddatz “from doing her job.”

“For the record, I want to clarify that I do not believe these connections prevent Ms. Raddatz from doing her job well tomorrow night,” she wrote. “I do think they are relevant and that Americans have a right to know about them when they evaluate her fairness and her performance. That’s why I have written about them in the past.”

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, in a tweet to POLITICO, wrote that “this whole mini flap was obnoxious, dumb.”

“I have no memory of who attended my 1997 wedding to my ex-wife and I’d like to keep it that way,” tweeted John Podhoretz, the conservative New York Post columnist and editor of “Commentary” magazine. “I bet Martha Raddatz is the same.” (Separately, he confirmed to POLITICO that he has no problem with Genachowski’s connection to Obama.)

Jim Geraghty of National Review quipped on Twitter, “Raddatz won’t be easy on [Vice President Joe] Biden because Obama was at her wedding. She’ll be hard on him, because Obama gave her a cassette of his speeches.”